EFT –emotional freedom technique

EFT, otherwise known as Emotional Freedom Techniques, is a type of Meridian Tapping that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology with startling results.

EFT –emotional freedom technique

EFT, otherwise known as Emotional Freedom Techniques, is a type of Meridian Tapping that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology with startling results. From pain relief, to healing childhood traumas, to clearing limiting financial beliefs, to weight loss, body image and food cravings, to fears and phobias, Tapping is proving to be a powerful, well-researched and easy to learn and apply technique. Tapping utilizes the body’s energy meridian points by stimulating them with your fingertips – literally tapping into your body’s own energy and healing power. Your body is more powerful than you can imagine… filled with life, energy, and a compelling ability for self-healing. With Tapping, you can take control of that power.

Why Does EFT Tapping Work?

When you’re experiencing a negative emotional state—angry or upset or fearful— your brain goes on alert. It prepares your body to enter a full-blown, fight-or- flight response. This response evolved to mobilize the body to face an external threat-think of a tiger coming after your ancient ancestor. All the body’s defense systems are turned on to support either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Your adrenaline pumps, your muscles tense, and your blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar all rise to give you extra energy to meet the challenge. Stressors in ancient days were very real threats to survival. Today, however, the fight-or-flight response is rarely activated by a physical threat. Most of our fight-or-flight responses today are triggered internally. For many of us, the internally generated stress response is triggered by a negative memory or thought that has its roots in past trauma or conditioned learning from childhood.

The stress response in the body takes the same form, whether the trigger is the tiger (external) or a negative memory (internal). The adrenaline flows, the heart races, and so on. What tapping does, with amazing efficiency, is halt the fight-or-flight response and reprogram the brain and body to act-and react-differently. The stress response begins in your brain in the almond-shaped amygdala, one of the components of the limbic system, or midbrain. The midbrain is located between the frontal lobes (the cortex) and the hindbrain (also called the reptilian brain-the earliest, most primitive part of the brain). The limbic system is the source of emotions and long-term memory, and it’s where negative experiences are encoded.

The amygdala has been called the body’s smoke detector. “Uh-oh, here comes trouble,” says the amygdala. “Something is threatening our safety.” It signals the brain to mobilize the body in the fight-or-flight response. Tapping on the meridian endpoints helps to deactivate the amygdala’s alarm and sends a calming response to the body, and the amygdala recognizes that it’s safe.

How to do EFT Tapping…

The basic technique requires you to focus on the negative emotion at hand: a fear or anxiety, a bad memory, or any other aspect around an unresolved problem, or anything that’s bothering you. While maintaining your mental focus on this issue, use your fingertips to tap 5-7 times each on 12 of the body’s meridian points. Tapping on these meridian points – while concentrating on accepting and resolving the negative emotion – will access your body’s energy, restoring it to a balanced state. You may be wondering about these meridians.

Put simply, energy circulates through your body along a specific network of channels. You can tap into this energy at any point along the system. This concept comes from the doctrines of traditional Chinese medicine, which referred to the body’s energy as “chi.” In ancient times, the Chinese discovered 100 meridian points. They also discovered that by stimulating these meridian points, they could heal. Call it energy, call it the Source, call it life force, and call it chi… Whatever you want to call it, it works. In some ways, Tapping is similar to acupuncture.

Like Tapping, acupuncture achieves healing through stimulating the body’s meridians and energy flow. However, unlike acupuncture, Tapping involves NO needles! “No needles” is definitely one of the advantages of Tapping. Acupuncture also takes years to master. Acupuncture practitioners must memorize hundreds of meridian points along the body; the knowledge and training take years to acquire. Tapping is simple and painless. It can be learned by anyone. And you can apply it to yourself, whenever you want, wherever you are. It’s less expensive and less time consuming.
It can be used with specific emotional intent towards your own unique life challenges and experiences. Most importantly, it gives you the power to heal yourself, putting control over your destiny back into your own hands.